I got the same problem in ubuntu 18.04 with nginx. By following the below steps my issue has been fixd:
First open terminal and enter into mysql CLI. To check mysql socket location I write the following command.
mysql> show variables like '%sock%'
I got something like the below :
+-----------------------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Variable_name                           | Value                       |
+-----------------------------------------+-----------------------------+
| mysqlx_socket                           | /var/run/mysqld/mysqlx.sock |
| performance_schema_max_socket_classes   | 10                          |
| performance_schema_max_socket_instances | -1                          |
| socket                                  | /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock |
+-----------------------------------------+-----------------------------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)
In laravel project folder, look for the database.php file in the config folder. In the mysql section I modified unix_socket according to the above table.
'mysql' => array(
        'driver'    => 'mysql',
        'host'      => '127.0.0.1',
        'database'  => 'database_name',
        'username'  => 'username',
        'password'  => 'password',
        'charset'   => 'utf8',
        'collation' => 'utf8_unicode_ci',
        'prefix'    => '',
        'unix_socket' => '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock',
    ),
Now just save changes, and reload the page and it worked.